Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 07, 2016, 19:24 (3212 days ago) @ David Turell

A philosophy professor who sounds just like Adler:-http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Evolution-Nature-Evolutionary-Explanation/dp/0198250045/ref=la_B001H6KLPU_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454872458&sr=1-5-Abstract:-"In this controversial new book O'Hear takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behavior in terms of evolution. He contends that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. O'Hear examines the nature of human self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins. It is our rationality that allows each of us to go beyond not only our biological but also our cultural inheritance: as the author says in the Preface, “we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individual way through life.”.-***-Comment by a reviewer:-"O'Hear argues the contrary with respect to three aspects of human achievement: epistemology, morality, and beauty. His epistemological argument is the most cogent, I believe. Why do human being seek truth? The evolutionary epistemologist will say that truth-seeking is adaptive. But, no other species seeks truth. Why is truth-seeking adaptive for us alone? An evolutionary approach to knowledge suggests that an organism will seek truth only insofar as the fitness gains outweigh the search costs. Humans, on the other hand, appear to have an incessant, unquenchable, insistent, drive to understand the world around them. This drive cannot be deduced from evolutionary theory. Indeed, evolutionary theory shows that very often being deluded has a fitness advantage over knowing the truth.-***-"Despite the fact that O'Hear could have made a better argument for beauty had he dealt with the sensory exploitation of neural circuitry, I found myself in basic agreement with his thesis that the sense of beauty goes immeasurably beyond the survival requirements of our species, and obeys a natural dynamic that cannot be captured by survival of the fittest."-Comment: Smells of Adler's thinking. The difference in humans is enormous, and NOT required for survival. Ask both how and why!